Short Review: Good directing, believable characters, uninteresting plot. Rent it if you want, but even if you’re a Clooney fan, you can skip it.

Directed by: George Clooney
    Also directed: Good Night and Good Luck (VERY good), Leather Heads (pretty Good).

Main Actors:
    Ryan Gosling: Known for: Crazy, Stupid, Love., Drive (2011), Blue Valentine (2010), Fracture
    George Clooney: Known for being George Clooney, all the Oceans movies, remember Three Kings? Er, From Dusk Till Dawn? or even Return of the Killer Tomatoes!, yeah...
    Philip Seymour Hoffman: known for: Mission: Impossible III , Doubt , Charlie Wilson's War , Before the Devil Knows You're Dead , Capote
    Paul Giamatti: known for: Sideways (2004), The Illusionist (2006), Shoot 'Em Up , Lady in the Water


As I said, the acting is good. Ryan Gosling plays a man who is helping to run a presidential nomination campaign for Clooney’s character, who Gosling feels is the ideal candidate “the one we’ve been waiting for.”  He has all the perfect liberal opinions for the perfect democratic candidate. Only problem is, he’s not winning. Paul Giamatti is running the campaign for another democrat running to get the nomination, and asks to meet Gosling. In the secret meeting, he asks Goslling to ditch his sinking campaign and join his. This sets off a series of unfortunate events and accusations that could ruin the careers of multiple people.

The entire movie and plot is centered around one question, “But at what cost?”  Few people ask themselves when working simply on ambition and glory, but only after consequences to seemingly innocent mistakes lead to horrible affects do we begin to wonder what we might have done differently.

After watching the entire movie, I was left unsatisfied and I didn’t quite understand why at first. After thinking about it a bit more, I felt as though I had just watched a documentary. Which, in and of itself isn’t a bad thing and is probably a tribute to Clooney’s abilities to tell a story. However, I was guess I was just looking for something more shocking, but the movie wasn’t supposed to shock, but to question and make us think about our political system. Which is good, I guess, but I already do...plus...what am I supposed to do about it?

If you like political thrillers, I suppose it’s a good watch, I can see what Clooney wanted to do here, but it was just...kinda...boring in a way.